Take the very visible and necessary move by the United States government to withdraw from the proposed International Criminal Court (ICC), the latest brainchild and expected offspring of the United Nations. While one can sympathize with the symbolism of President George W. Bush withdrawing formal U.S. support from the ICC, the problem associated with American participation in the ICC and other U.N. agencies is much larger and more serious, requiring U.S. government action far more decisive and drastic than that taken thusfar.

The United Nations and its agencies constitute a pro-Statist, pro-Socialist, anti-American Trojan Horse that deserves no thanks for being a socalled "gift to mankind" and no place in New York City or any other locality in the U.S.A. The International Criminal Court, like existing U.N. agencies have done or have tried to do, will decide and act against American national interests and sovereignty. Once it has been established and begins to operate, the ICC will take legal aim at the U.S.A., its Constitution, its citizens, its corporations, its capitalism, its Christianity, and its state and local governments.

So yes, let's get out if the ICC! If this was what the U.S. signature withdrawal symbolized, it would be all well and good. But America's signature withdrawal did not--and still does not--symbolize U.S. non-support for and non-affiliation with the ICC.

As far back as February of 1994, Senator Jesse Helms (Republican--North Carolina) warned his colleagues in the U.S. Senate of the threat posed by the ICC. He warned that such an international court would eventually be used to "try individuals, including Americans, for such vague crimes as 'colonialism' or 'environmental crimes.' These crimes and these cases would be tried before judges who could be from North Korea, Cuba, or other unfriendly places."

In April of the same year, Helms' prediction received partial vindication. The U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice met in Vienna, Austria, to discuss the crisis of "environmental crime" and to urge (1) the "international harmonization of existing legislation" regarding the environment and (2) the creation of an international court with jurisdiction over eco-offenses.

And so herein lies a fundamental flaw in the opposition of the Bush administration and the Republican Party to the International Criminal Court, for aside from its supposed withdrawal from all support for the ICC, the Bush administration has focused its opposition on the fear of U.S. military servicemen being pulled into foreign courts on spurious offenses, and an attendant need for specific protections, but has remained silent about the ICC's broader mandate--the intention of the proponents of the ICC to eventually have it claim jurisdiction over every American on every imaginable issue.

The ICC's present jurisdiction is over certain vaguely defined, open ended crimes--genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Consider genocide, a crime which has its roots in the internationally ratified Genocide Treaty. The crime has never been narrowly defined. Legal scholar Dr. Robert A. Friedlander, formerly of Ohio Northern University, has testified, "The designation of genocide in the convention is vague and overbroad, arbitrary and capricious, and unreasonable in construction. Genocide, as defined by the convention, can apply to just about anyone, doing almost any act, posing almost any threat to virtually any type of victim."

But that's the way the United Nations likes its laws--laws that are vague, overbroad, arbitrary, and capricious.

Grover Rees, of the Center for Judicial Studies, points out: "[the scope of genocide could include] policies deemed to have adverse effects on the birth rates, death rates, or distinct racial identity of indigenous minority groups; the United States' support for birth control programs in the Third World; police campaigns against the Black Panthers; the conduct of the United States in the war in Indochina; and [U.S. support for] Israeli policies toward the Palestinians on the West Bank, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and elsewhere."

U.S. Senator Steve Symms (Republican--Idaho) warned in 1985 that the then proposed "Genocide Treaty" was riddled with flaws. "The ambiguous wording--just one of the many quicksand items in the treaty, with genocide described as vaguely as mental harm to a group (and a group could constitute one individual)--is a legal nightmare."

Further, hate crimes, similar to the above premise, will fit right into genocide's expansive definition. And Article 3 of the Genocide Treaty demands that the law prosecute those who "publicly incite" this wide open crime of genocide. The Genocide Treaty will offer the ICC a golden opportunity to place free speech and religious freedom under the ax of the treaty's ambiguity.

On the other hand, Senator Symms noted, the Genocide Treaty does nothing to outlaw or condemn genocidal acts and atrocities by Communist and other totalitarian or highly authoritarian, tyranical regimes. Here's why: The United States had originally insisted that the term "political groups, organizations, and parties" as well as "national, ethnical, racial, and religious groups" be included in the definition of potential victims of genocide. The Soviet Union, however, lobbied successfully to exclude from the treaty any language that would condemn the destruction of a "political" faction or movement as genocide. Thus, Communist and socalled "ex-Communist" governments are permitted by the Genocide Treaty to wage genocide against opposition "political" groups, organizations, parties, factions, and movements.

Finally, said Symms, the real intent of U.N. laws against genocide is to "endorse a newspeak definition of genocide for domestic political reasons and, in the process, actually condone genocide."

The potential for foul play by the International Criminal Court in dealing with the crime of genocide is endless.

In 1993, U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat--Connecticut) introduced a resolution calling for the establishment of the ICC to combat "unlawful acts such as war crimes, genocide, aggression, terrorism, drug trafficing, money laundering, and other crimes of an international character."

Expect the list to expand, and national sovereignty to erode. "Ex-Communist," Miklail Gorbachev, seeing the need to expand ICC jurisdiction to "the field of ecology ... to avert catastrophe," noted in the 1990 Global Forum in Moscow, "such a policy poses unconventional and difficult problems that will affect the sovereignty of states," but so be it.

In response to Gorbachev's proposal, New York Times columnist and fellow one-worlder Flora Lewis (CFR), praised Gorbachev for going "beyond accepted notions of the limits of national sovereignty and rules of behavior ... [by providing] a plan for a global code of environmental conduct," which "would have an aspect of world government, because it would provide for the World Court to judge states." This, she gushed, "is a breathtaking idea, beyond the current dreams of ecology militants.... And it is fitting that the environment be the topic for what amounts to global policing.... Even starting the effort would be a giant step for international law."

In the end, like the U.N., the ICC, rest assured, will be all about supporting Leftwing dictatorships, Socialist and Statist economies, and acts of terrorism. The ICC will be all about undermining and prosecuting Americanism, constitutionalism (constitutional government), free enterprise capitalism, Christianity, and Judaism. When you join hands with international criminals, you do not create a system based on the rule of law. When you give the gavel to representatives of tyrannical regimes, rogue states and terrorist-supporting governments, you do not create a system that promotes justice. The argument in favor of establishing the ICC is all nonsense.

That is what is so peculiar about the "withdrawal" of the U.S. signature on the ICC Treaty. The U.S. government pulled its signature, a great idea, but still supports the ICC and the United Nations which spawned the treaty. This symbolism suggests as eyewash concession to Conservative Republicans who are less than happy with the present administration's internationalism (one-worldism) and watered-down Conservatism.

What's all too typical of this administration is that it withdraws its signature rather publicly, but then comes the Devil in the details:

The U.S.A. does not reject the ICC's right to jurisdiction over all the other nations of the earth, 130 of whom did not sign on.

The U.S.A. does not reject participation in U.N. tribunals in a case-by-case basis. (If the Bush administration rejects the ICC use against the military, which cases will be acceptable? Those against U.S. civilians, corporations or churches or against anti-Communists like Pinochet?)

The U.S.A. still believes "a properly created ICC could be a useful tool in promoting human rights and holding the perpetrators of the worst violations accountable before the world."

The U.S.A. objects that the U.N. Security Council, which includes such thug states as Russia and China, doesn't have veto power over the ICC's decisions, when history testifies that the thug states have long used their veto power against U.S. national interests.

Such U.S. requests for "reform" of the ICC and other U.N. agencies demonstrates U.S. allegiance to a United Nations Charter which concentrates power in the hands of a tyrannical few.

Cicero said: "To know is to be responsible." For those Americans who know the truth about the U.N., the ICC and the continuing support the Eastern Liberal Establishment lends to international institutions staffed by enemies of the U.S.A., it is the responsibility of those knowledgeable Americans to say enough is enough and insist that their political party, their Senators and Representatives in Congress, and their President steer clear of half-hearted and purely symbolic measures, but rather do the following: Get the U.S.A. out of the International Criminal Court, and out of the United Nations!

Steve Farrell is author of the upcoming book, MISSING THE MARK WITH RELIGION.

This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics, civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy, and political philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.

POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS

POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE

Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.

Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs, International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests, Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy

INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

---

THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis

Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor

Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic, Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues

Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity